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Republicans Need a Champion in 2016

We are already at the point in this prematurely unfolding 2016 presidential campaign when a glance down the list of prospective candidates can cause most observers to wince. As that seductive and sultry crooner Peggy Lee once sang, “Is that all there is?”

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At the U.Va. Crystal Ball, we currently have 11 Republicans and nine Democrats as probable or possible presidential contenders. The Democrats have fewer and more tentative contenders because of the paralyzing gravitational pull of “Planet Hillary,” as the New York Times Magazinedescribed the Clinton operation. The former secretary of state is a kind of massive Jupiter in a solar system that may not have many more worlds if she runs.

The Republicans have a sharply different problem. They have plenty of wannabes but no obvious general election winner. It’s not that we can’t construct scenarios by which this or that GOP nominee will capture the White House three years hence. Rather, it is that no one on the present list seems able to convincingly combat the growing demographic edge that produces a Democratic lead in the Electoral College.

Republicans probably won’t believe this assertion once they do reasonably well in this November’s low-turnout, red state-skewed midterm election; they’ll fool themselves again, just as they did after their 2010 midterm triumph, when the most frequently heard GOP comment was, “Even my dog could beat President Obama in 2012.”

Maybe Obama will be so unpopular by 2016, or the economy bad enough, that the Democratic nominee simply can’t win. But if the general election turns out to be closely competitive, as most open-seat contests for the White House are, who among the Republicans can redraw an Electoral College map that’s strongly in the Democrats’ favor?

Many Republicans privately worry that there isn’t anybody, but if forced to choose a champion, they will argue it is Jeb Bush. The Bush family’s extensive network of operatives and contributors will certainly be a giant assist to his nomination, and Jeb’s ties to segments of the Hispanic population, plus past success in critical Florida, give him a plausible general election strategy. But Jeb Bush was last on a Sunshine State ballot in 2002, and it’s not difficult to see him trapped in the web of his brother’s very mixed legacy. If elected he would be the third Bush in the White House. The aspiring Clinton dynasty is just working on its second occupant.

Tea Party Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas probably can’t do much better than Bush with Hispanics, despite their ethnic heritage, and because of their far-right positioning they may do far worse with other swing groups. A sitting governor is also a possibility, as I noted in a previous column: Govs. Scott Walker of Wisconsin and John Kasich of Ohio are promising but untested presidential contenders, unless you count Kasich’s brief, unsuccessful 2000 bid. The unfolding e-mail brouhaha surrounding Walker, while small potatoes in some ways, shows the risks associated with any pol who hasn’t gone through the national wringer.

A more potent scandal in the Garden State has already made it obvious that Gov. Chris Christie’s White House hopes could be a bridge too far. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky has a shaky libertarian-lite coalition that rhetorically reaches from Edward Snowden to Monica Lewinsky, but may be subject to catastrophic collapse due to internal stresses and contradictions. Then there’s Gov. Rick Perry of Texas and former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania; they would offer the GOP a melancholy reprise of the Goldwater landslide defeat of 1964.

Is there no one who can break the stranglehold Democrats have on 70-90 percent of various demographic minorities (African-Americans, Hispanics/Latinos, Asian-Americans, and gays and lesbians) and 55-60 percent of women and the young (age 18-29)? These groups, some swelling in size, practically hand a presidential election to Democrats as long as the party’s candidate can secure a mere 38-40 percent of the white vote.

The natural GOP impulse could be to put a minority or a woman on the ticket, so that gender or ethnic identity can pull enough votes to transform electoral reality. The theory is probably flawed. All by itself, a token representative of diversity—especially in the second slot on the ticket—won’t have the juice to undo decades of partisan polarization among women and minorities.

But what about another approach—finding a nominee who doesn’t just superficially demonstrate diversity but has taken a substantive, career-threatening position in standing up for diversity? Happy talk, campaign promises and speaking slots at national conventions are wholly inadequate if the goal is the remaking of the electorate. By contrast, a genuine profile in courage who has dramatically broken with GOP orthodoxy and demonstrated a capacity for growth can get the party a hearing, maybe more, with skeptical voters.

Enter Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio. Portman attracted national attention in 2013 when he announced that his son, Will, an undergraduate student at Yale, was gay. Portman declared his support not just for his son but also for same-sex marriage. This happened before the key Supreme Court decision on gay marriage, and showed real family values, not the phony ones invoked by many politicians. Every political adviser on Portman’s team must have warned him of the dangers: You could lose your seat in a primary, you’ll be targeted by social conservatives, your national career will be over and your effectiveness even within the Senate will be circumscribed. It took guts to do what Portman did, with the political consequences unknown and potentially severe.

Before Portman’s dramatic announcement, I often heard political observers on both sides of the aisle name him as one of the most qualified and able presidential candidates the GOP could muster. It’s easy to see why. Portman was a respected member of the House from 1993 to 2005, then U.S. Trade Representative for President George W. Bush and subsequently director of Bush’s Office of Management and Budget. In 2010, Ohioans voted Portman into the Senate by a landslide margin, 57%-39 percent. Though Portman served late in the Bush years, the OMB post still opens him up to criticism about Bush’s smoke-and-mirrors budgets, full of debt, tax cuts and unpaid-for wars. Yet it also demonstrates he understands the federal bureaucracy and could govern from day one. The trade post gives Portman some foreign policy background, which would be useful in a run against a former secretary of state. Add to this his geographic placement in one of the swingiest states, without which no Republican has ever been elected president.

Colleagues on both sides of the aisle like Portman, who is low-key and willing to listen, if not agree, with others’ strongly held points of view. Cheap shots and grandstanding press conferences are not in his repertoire.

He’s serious, credible and smart. So why isn’t there more Portman chatter?

Larry J. Sabato is university professor of politics and director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, which publishes the online, free Crystal Ball politics newsletter every Thursday, and a regular columnist for Politico Magazine. His most recent book is The Kennedy Half-Century: The Presidency, Assassination, and Lasting Legacy of John F. Kennedy.